A team of seven Bodog online poker players will be out in the field for the 2008 Irish Poker Open. (Bodog Beat Image)

The 2008 Irish Poker Open gets underway Thursday, March 20, and among the field in Dublin will be a team of seven poker players from the U.S. and Scandinavia donning the black and red of Team Bodog.

The seven Team Bodog members earned their entries into the Irish Poker Open through online qualifiers offered this past January and February in the Bodog Poker room. The qualifier winners each received a $9,000 prize package that included the tournament buy-in, travel expenses, and Team Bodog gear along with the attention of a personal Team Bodog handler.

The seven Team Bodog members are: Joseph "Dyzalot" Morneau (Deerfield, NH), Danilo "kingkai" Paulsen (Trondheim, Norway), Timothy "timmo1122″ Barany (Crownpoint, IN), Mike "X____X" Stecker (Granite Bay, CA), Cory "Ozone23″ Albertson (Houston, TX), Andreas "sjah75″ Heldman (Stockholm, Sweden), and Magnus "EQLIZER" Hulden (Helsinki, Finland).

Europe’s oldest and largest poker tournament, the Irish Poker Open annually showcases one of the largest fields and cash purses on the European poker circuit. The guaranteed prize pool has been increased to €3 million (approximately US $4.7 million), up €1 million from a year ago. With the higher guaranteed prize pool, tournament officials anticipate this year's attendance to reach the 1,000 player cap.

Last year's Irish Poker Open featured a total cash purse of €2 million (approximately US$3.1 million) and drew 708 players. The winner, Englishman Marty Smyth, took home an impressive US$867,546 first-place prize. Already confirmed for this year's event are poker legend Doyle Brunson, female poker ace JJ Liu, Australia's Mel Judah, England's Barney Boatman and local Irish hero Padraig Parkinson.

With the Irish Poker Open here and the summer drawing ever closer, online poker players have turned their attention to Bodog's 2008 World Series of Poker qualifiers. A guaranteed four WSOP seats are up for grabs every week at the Bodog Poker tables this March and April, with that number jumping to five per week in May and June. Each Main Event prize package includes the $10,000 buy-in to the tournament, $2,000 for travel expenses, loads of Team Bodog gear and the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience Las Vegas in total Bodog style, including meeting the Bodog Girls and much, much more.

For more details on Bodog's online qualifiers for the 2008 WSOP Main Event, visit the Bodog Poker room.

Bodog online poker player "Dyzalot" recently won a seat into the Irish Poker Open. (Bodog Beat Image)

Bodog regular Joe "Dyzalot" Morneau has been raking it in recently in the Bodog Poker room but not in your regular run-of-the-mill multi-table poker tournaments. No, this guy's after bigger fish and bigger paydays. The online poker player has now won two $12,000 Bodog "Player's Choice" packages to play in major European poker tournaments, one to the EPT Copenhagen (aka Scandinavian Open) event and the other one to the Irish Poker Open.

The EPT Copenhagen – Scandinavian Open kicks off in exactly a week but is already sold out. That means that the tournament cap of 460 has been reached with pre-registrations, but tournament officials will probably work to accommodate a few more alternates within the first couple of rounds of the starting days. So, for now we can guesstimate that, with the current number of entrants, the prizepool will be around $4.2 million (after 4% goes to the Danish government for the gaming tax), which means that the first-place prize will most likely exceed $1 million. Now that's what we like to call "bigger fish."

The Irish Poker Open will be held in Dublin beginning on March 19th and will have a €3 million ($4.3 million) guaranteed prizepool. The event currently holds the record as the largest European tournament, set when 708 players came out last year to play, and it should be even bigger this year.

Qualifiers are still going on for the Irish Poker Open at Bodog Poker and qualifiers run daily for as little as $1. Check the Bodog Poker Tournament Schedule to see when the next one runs. Don't miss out on your chance to qualify online for an EPT or WPT event or the 2008 WSOP.